Kxamtseng tok
by Sothis Star1
Summary: A companion to "Five seconds too late," this is a collection of vignettes depicting Jake's side of the story. Revised 3/9/2011.
1. Author's preface

**Preface: I wouldn't recommend reading this if you haven't already read "Five seconds too late." For one thing, there are spoilers; for another, none of it will make sense. "Five seconds" is what provides the actual story. These nuggets are merely bonus material, with the first chapter corresponding with chapter two of "Five seconds." (Feel free to skip my babblings and proceed to the actual fic if you like.)**

**I initially had a really hard time picking a genre for "Five seconds;" for a while I just left it at "general." Is it angst? Hurt/comfort? There's plenty of both, but the story was never _about_ that. Supernatural? Spiritual? Meh. Family? Mo'at and Mo'kriya and the other Omaticaya feature heavily, but they are sort of supporting characters when it comes down to it. That's when I realized: this fic is a romance. Not a typical romance plot, maybe. But everything was ultimately about Jake and Neytiri and the unique character of their love. **

"**Five seconds" followed Neytiri's journey, but this really is a two-way romance, and I hope these vignettes help highlight that. Jake and Neytiri have to endure the ultimate in long-distance relationships. They have to work together and literally _conquer death_ to be together; no small feat when you consider that the moon-brain is a scientifically quantifiable phenomenon (as Grace points out), and certain mechanisms need to be in place if you want to interact with it. **

**The other thing I hope to highlight is how strong these two have to be. One of my pet peeves about the classic and popular romances is the number of stories in which one partner is removed from the picture and the other either commits suicide or becomes a non-functioning emotional wreck. I'm not saying that those are bad stories, but to me, true love is about strength, faith, hope... living the life your partner would've wanted you to live. It annoyed me that we're supposed to see the undoing of the partner left behind as validation of the relationship's power. I wanted to write a story where, for once, the lovers are _rewarded_ for keeping their heads up. If either half of the couple in "five seconds" had given in and taken the easy way out, their story would not have had a happy ending.**

**Jake and Neytiri are actually pretty epic, I've been finding. I hope you enjoy. And don't forget to review!**


	2. Awakening

**Awakening**

* * *

Someone's calling my name.

That's the first thought, called up out of nothing.

_Jake, come back._

"Jake." That's me. A second thought.

The twin thoughts revolve around each other in silence. They fill the universe—not because they're big, but because nothing else exists.

A tug comes from somewhere, and now the thoughts are revolving in the middle of a great void, and I see them from outside. I see them hanging there, surrounded by empty space.

More thoughts start appearing—bright dots of awareness blinking awake against a backdrop of infinite nothing.

I see a face, and somehow I know it's my face.

I see a different face, and somehow I know that one's mine too.

Then I see _her_ face. And now the thoughts pour in like a torrent—a rushing river of memory, a movie in fast forward—and with each new thought, my awareness gets more complete, more textured, more layered with context. I see a rich, green world. I know that I've been there, and that it has a name. I see sky. I hear moving water. I feel the memory of wind and the warmth of the soil, and I remember them all. I _know_ them.

I hear a voice – her voice – and now there's a new dimension. Time. Change. Images join and become events – things that have happened to me – and those swirl together and become a story. I remember chasing her through the forest. I remember her teaching me to speak and to See, teaching me to hunt and ride and shoot. I remember the viperwolves—my first glimpse of her—and from there I remember our first flight and our first kiss. It all comes back to me – simultaneously and out of order, faster and faster. I remember a great menace and a great tragedy. I remember the rejection and the redemption and the feel of her hand on my shoulder as Toruk carried us. I remember the thrill and horror of battle—a chaos of fire and blood and shattered glass. Images of war flash before me in a rising tide of death and destruction, pushing forward, culminating in a remembered violence, a desperate struggle, a powerful enemy, a hopeless choking, and then—

_... holy shit._

_I died. _

That guy – the one who owns this name, these faces, these memories; the one I keep calling "I"—he's _dead_. Gone from the universe. And yet... these thoughts...

_What the hell is going on?_

There's a shift, and now everything makes less and less sense instead of more.

I see her face again, and now there's this single-minded urgency—an unshakable truth in the confusion, like a boulder in the surf. There's a tugging coming from somewhere and I instinctively fight my way toward it, knowing it's important – so very, _very_ important that I reach it. Everything fades – the whole crashing storm becoming background – leaving only this one need behind.

She needs me. I need to reach her. I hear her voice and it buries itself in my mind like a harpoon, tearing at me, dragging me toward some unknown destination. I struggle desperately to follow it, to keep up, to reach its source, while the wind pulls me everywhere at once. I fight my way forward—reaching, slipping, falling back, reaching again.

I'm climbing a waterfall on a greased rope.

_Jake, come back._

_I'm trying, Neytiri. I'm trying._

_Don't give up. Please don't give up._

Her voice is closer now. I lunge blindly forward, scrabbling for purchase—for something to hold onto. I fall into empty space, but something catches me before I can disappear, and I try again, then again.

Dimly through the noise, I become aware of their voices, and dimly, I recognize them as the voices of my clan—my people. I recognize the rhythm of their chant, and suddenly I remember Grace Augustine. A scene flashes in my memory like lightning, and I remember trying to save her at the Tree of Souls. I remember the same pulsing energy, and with dawning realization, I understand what's happened to me. And now I'm aware—horribly aware—of just how fragile I am right now. I'm aware, somehow, that only their effort is making me something instead of nothing, giving me form through sheer force of will. Their voices beat in unison like the pounding of a drum, guiding me forward, holding me together—calling to me.

I don't know if they can hear me. But I call back and tell them I'm here and I'm coming. I promise I'm fighting with everything I've got and beg them to hold the door for me just a little longer.

Goddammit, but I am _so close._ Like I could just reach out and touch her – pull her close and tell her I'm sorry and that I'll do anything to put things right again. I can feel her beside me, inside me, and it makes no goddamn sense because that only makes me miss her more. And that's how I know this has to work—that I gotta make it work. Because this wasn't supposed to happen. I wasn't supposed to lose her so soon.

I throw myself toward her, thrashing wildly against the wind. But I'm having that nightmare where you're chasing a door that's just one step away. It's all so fucking difficult – harder than I ever thought anything could be. Harder than being Toruk Makto, harder than being a Marine, harder than being a cripple. Losing my legs was nothing, 'cause now my entire body is gone, and the very cosmos seem dead set against me getting it back. But I don't care, I tell her. I'm going to be part of her life again, because we've done the impossible before, and we'll do it again.

Then suddenly, everything goes wrong.

Somewhere above, the rope snaps. And now it doesn't matter how I fight, my support is gone, and I feel myself falling, falling, falling from an endless height, the wind tearing at me as tumble toward some kind of dark, roaring chaos.

_I'm sorry._

The memories strip away as I fall – one-by-one, faster and faster – dissolving in the wind. In my last moment, I muster a titanic effort of will and throw a net over them, unable to keep them from flying away, but trying desperately to keep them in each other's vicinity, in a formless cloud of spirit.

Drifting through the void, fragments of a forgotten... something.


	3. Dreaming

**Dreaming**

I'm not sure what's going on.

I'm not sure where I am.

I'm not sure _what_ I am.

I'm not even sure if this is really a piece of existence, whatever is happening here, or if the universe is just having a brief hallucination. These are thoughts though, aren't they? There is a sense of "me," and the "me" is drifting, eddying, formless, but somehow it is forming the shape of ideas within itself.

A thought breaks the surface, then bursts as a different thought takes its place. Memories are remembered, then forgotten, then remembered again for the first time. I drift through fragments, my movements unplanned and unnoticed.

The passing thoughts feed a slow-growing puzzlement, drop by drop, until it finally breaks off and becomes its own thought – its own question. Something isn't making sense.

Jake died. He doesn't exist in this universe—this reality—anymore.

So what does that make me? His ghost?

Whatever I am, I seem to have his memories. And whatever he was, I have this feeling that I'm supposed to gather those memories and stop them from getting lost. That he... we... that _I_ need them for something. That they need to be taken somewhere. That it's important—very important—though I have no idea why.

Does there need to be a why?

I don't know. I don't know anything.

Well, it's something to do—something to make thoughts about. That's all this "me"-ness seems capable of, anyway, so it might as well do it._I _might as well do it. I have nothing better to do, not until something changes. Until something finds me.


	4. Waiting

**Waiting**

* * *

I am so tired. This is taking forever.

I think I abused that word, back in what I _think_ was my life. "This line is taking forever." "This burrito is taking forever to heat." "This blond chick is taking forever to come." "Forever" came to mean simply "a little longer than would be ideal for my convenience."

But, no, this time when I say "forever," I mean it in a way that I never have before, as far as I can tell in the memories at my disposal. I've been feeling that way about a lot of words I used to just toss around. "Love," for one. That one takes up an entire monologue all by itself, which is useful.

Turns out holding your essence together with your thoughts is exhausting, just like how something as easy as holding out your arm gets excruciating when you have to do it for hours. And I feel like I've been doing this since the beginning of time.

I feel like it's been a thousand summers since I saw Neytiri, and I'm not just saying that to be poetic or something. It's always summer _somewhere_ on Pandora. Funny, I never got to see any other season; I sort of assumed it was always hot and humid here. It is, in a way, but there are patterns I didn't live long enough to see. Suspended in this... state... though, you see everything at once, or I guess "feel" is more accurate. No, that's not right either. Perceive? That'll have to do.

I'm not sure if time "flows" the same way here as it does for the living. I feel ancient, like one of those massive, gnarled trees. As if a year passes for me with every minute that passes for them. But then again, it would probably feel that way no matter what. They're waking up, going to sleep, having meals. Kids get older; they have their various firsts. Their life has rhythm. I have nothing to measure my ill-defined existence with, not even a heartbeat. And I have nothing to do with myself, other than wait and think and wander and endure. Seconds and decades become interchangeable. Everything blends together into one seamless, featureless continuum.

Well, not entirely featureless. I do meet others once in a long while—what I can only assume are my fellow ghost-things. I met Grace. I met Eytukan and Tsu'tey. Didn't meet Trudy. Not sure why. Anyway, even they seem more... solid. More coherent. They have form. Grace looked just like I remember her, except a thousand times happier. Though maybe her "image" was just a result of memories projecting into what passes for my mind when I encountered her... er, I guess "soul." I don't know if anyone truly has an objectively observable form here, to borrow some of Grace's geek-speak.

It took me a while to get her attention. I can't seem to call up the same kind of form in another person's mind, at least not right away. I am a ghost among ghosts.

I felt less ghostly after meeting her, though. And it was easier to get people's attention afterward. It's as if Grace was able to remind me of forgotten parts of my being, parts of my history and character that I'd lost access to. I remembered her trying to help me into the Link and me refusing, wanting at least the dignity of hauling my own stupid legs around. I remembered being a paraplegic human Marine again. We spoke, and I remembered the oddly understanding way she kept trying to warn me about getting in too deep with the Na'vi, telling me I had to accept that I could never truly be with Neytiri, that my time with her was borrowed.

Well, she was completely right, turns out. I knew she was right, even then. I didn't listen to her. It's hard to say now whether I would change anything if I could go back and have a re-do.

Same type of thing happened when I met Eytukan and Tsu'tey, and I saw myself through their eyes. Geez, I was obnoxious at the beginning, when I first met the clan. No wonder they kinda wanted to kill me. Hadn't realized.

It's funny—it seems every death that happens out there makes me more alive in here. The death of my ikran was a turning point. My buddy came and found me, just as he had after Hometree fell. We reunited, and I remembered the wings churning beneath my feet, the wind in my hair, the adrenaline in my pulse, and for the first time in this not-existence, I remembered what it felt like to be _alive._

He got eaten by Toruk, ironically. Anyway, holding myself together was a lot easier after that.

It's still a bitch, though. I have to keep up a constant stream of thoughts, or I'll just vanish. I can't let my guard down for one moment. I'm starting to appreciate why endless sleep deprivation eventually drives people crazy. I've replayed my life memories so many times that I am screaming sick of it, sick of the whole production, like being forced to watch the same stupid movie over and over and over again forever.

Except Neytiri. I don't ever get sick of remembering her, not really. Granted, I want nothing more right now than to go to sleep, to stop struggling and let the darkness take me. But then I remember her smile when I told her I'd chosen her, and I decide I can hang on a little longer. Just playing that memory on loop.

I still can't wait to see her here, to have her in my arms for real. Something tells me that when I find her, I will be complete and perfect, and the struggle will be over. It's all that's keeping me going, honestly, the light at the end of the tunnel that makes this eternity of tense waiting worth it. You know, I was never a romantic guy, so it's pretty funny to see the kind of tired cliches that ended up coming true for me. She is all I am living for right now. Well, not "living," exactly. But you know what I mean.

I feel kind of rotten, though, about how impatient I get sometimes. My relationship with Neytiri was completely selfish, from the very beginning. It was always her giving and me taking. Am I so selfish now as to wish she would hurry up and die already, just so I can stop trying to find things to occupy my thoughts? If I had the power, would I take away her right to a long and happy life on this gorgeous world of hers, on top of everything else I took away?

You know what, never mind. I hope she takes her time. I hope she stays out there until she's a wrinkled old grandmother, and that she cherishes every day of it. I mean it. I really do. She deserves it.

I can manage. I have to. Because even if she lives to be a hundred, one day she'll come inside. And when she does, I'll be here. Waiting.


	5. Rebirth

**Rebirth**

Huh. So _this_ is what Eywa's like.

After so much grey, ghostly waiting, meeting Toruk was like an explosion of color, a bolt from the blue. And suddenly it all clicks into place, as if I've been holding the scraps of my being in cupped hands and then suddenly, _finally_, I have a framework to assemble them on. My spirit animal.

I have form again. I can _move_, with purpose, not the random drifting I was doing before. Toruk becomes me, and I become him, and together we fly through this moon-brain like tourists, the timeless history of this world streaming past like a soft hail of fireflies. I can hear the echoes of generations upon generations of Na'vi, just like at the Tree of Voices, except here I can single one out and direct my mind at it, and it becomes a person, a face—someone I can talk to. I am swimming in a bottomless well of stories.

Man, if I'd had access to _this_ while I was waiting, the time would've flown. There's so much to see and learn and explore. I could do this forever.

But not now.

Someone is calling my name.

This time, I can answer. I turn my newly mobile consciousness in the direction of the sound and glide toward it on the wings of my soul.

I draw close, and I can hear the shape of Neytiri's thoughts.

Poor girl. I think she's in pain.

I think I can fix that.


End file.
